Well, the drama continued when "Nick Simmons," responded to these accusations on facebook. The responses showed little guilt, or any cultural awareness for that fact, and riled up many a reader. Well, the real Nick Simmons, not his publisher, has issued a statement which has addressed how this was a fake correspondence, and addressed this entire matter.
A) Its nice to know he is a fan“Like most artists I am inspired by work I admire. There are certain similarities between some of my work and the work of others. This was simply meant as an homage to artists I respect, and I definitely want to apologize to any Manga fans or fellow Manga artists who feel I went too far. My inspirations reflect the fact that certain fundamental imagery is common to all Manga. This is the nature of the medium.
“I am a big fan of Bleach, as well as other Manga titles. And I am certainly sorry if anyone was offended or upset by what they perceive to be the similarity between my work and the work of artists that I admire and who inspire me.”
B) He referred to himself as a Manga artist.
C) The vibe I'm getting is "I'm sorry if I offended anyone, but I'm pretty sure I did nothing wrong."
D) Though the one that really upped my ire was...
Though, as Gia put it in discussion, "If Simmons is willing to bring it up like this, he's probably doesn't think he'll get sued..."My inspirations reflect the fact that certain fundamental imagery is common to all Manga. This is the nature of the medium.
Even if they do start to republish. Sales are going to plummet and it will probably be canceled soon anyways.
On the other hand, Simmons clearly didn't admit to any wrongdoing, which would be the biggest potential pitfall, so it's not like there's no way he might wind up with a lawsuit. On the other hand, I would still be surprised if it came to that.
also, it's really hard to Google his name alone -_-
It's called Incarnate, from new comic press Radical. It was being released as a three issue miniseries, to be collected into a trade paperback later this year. Only two issues are out, Radical has said they're putting Incarnate on hiatus, and that likely means (if this plagiarism thing is a true as it looks) that the series is dead and the trade is never coming out.
And yes, it's probably a very bad idea to talk about it, but obviously he didn't show enough judgment in the first place, I guess he doesn't think to start now.
" My inspirations reflect the fact that certain fundamental imagery is common to all Manga. This is the nature of the medium. "
So let me get this straight, he's saying basically that all manga looks the same as a general excuse? Jeez dude....
@Miken:
In all fairness, the drawings aren't similar enough to suggest that they were traced-- I'd say he was probably looking at the Bleach pictures while drawing.
Which doesn't make it any less skeezy.
Incarnate #3 of 3 was meant to come out in December and is listed as on sale as of 9th December on Radical's site, so I'm pretty sure its already been released (although it didn't actually "end" with 3 of 3). There are images from it being used in the comparisons too.
That's the only part of his message that truly ticked me off.
@Ephidel said:
Hmm, its interesting. Knowing that the work is "completed" and such a small miniseries does kinda change a bit for me. Its not like he'll be stretching out more and more of bleach homages for months/years of content.
Ah but he wanted to. Quoted from this interview.
I've stopped after that quote because "as long as I can" is pretty indicative of the type of timespan you were talking about, but the next quote from him does have a timeframe stating he planned to still be working on Incarnate two years down the line.
With regards to his statement about the 'end' of the Incarnate miniseries though, he's telling the truth; The third issue does come with a To Be Continued attached. It also comes with some dodgy pacing that causes some of the exposition event(s?) and answer->morequestions moments to look more stilted and tacked on than they otherwise might. :|
Its awkward really. He refers to it as an arc, but I'm not really sure that it 'feels' like much progression has been made, or change effected, by the 'end'. I can see it, but it sort of lacks that 'rounded' 'complete' 'ready to move on' feeling an arc implies for me. It feels a little like it was halted at that point because, meh, it was as good a place as any to do so.(Edit: Erk, messed up the formatting. Hopefully fixed now).